The Necessity of Hate-Crime Laws

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses hate-crimes and looks at the arguments from both opponents and advocates of hate-crime legislation. Among the cons listed by the writer is the argument that some form of hate motivates all crimes, and that hate-crime laws are therefore redundant and unnecessary. The counterargument is that the greatest value in such laws is the message that they convey to society that crimes against a particular group of people will not be tolerated. The writer concludes that hate-crime laws should be kept in effect since it has been shown that these laws do prevent occurrences of smaller hate-crimes.

From the Paper:

"All Americans have a right to feel safe, and hate-crimes violate that right not just for individuals, but for entire groups of people. Therefore, advocates say, hate-crimes must be identified and, where possible, punished more severely than other crimes. They admit that sentence-enhancing has little impact on murder cases, but they say that hate-crime laws can effectively raise penalties for most other crimes, such as beatings or vandalism. Hate-crime laws will act as a deterrence for committing hate-crimes. The stricter punishment for the law being broken will make criminals less likely to commit them."

Sample of Sources Used:

• Dooling, Richard. "Punish Crime, Not Hate." Wall Street Journal 20 July 1998: A18.
• Fletcher, Michael. "Hate Crime Takes Shape in Conference Testimony." Washington Post 11 Nov. 1997: A8.
• Lyman, Rick. "Hate Laws Don't Matter, Except When They Do." New York Times 18 Oct. 1998: A6.
• Murray, Frank J. "Hate-Crime Laws Back Before Supreme Court." Mark Insight on the News 10 Jan. 2000: 28.

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